The Light of Life Shines Through

Upon the integrity of our authenticity, the light of the Lord Jesus shines through us brilliantly unfettered, undeterred for others to see. The uninhibited exhibition of strength and weakness together dynamically interwoven amidst life challenges bears witness to sovereign glory.

Espiritu's #MorningFamilyDevotions together sharing #LentenReflections

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The Art of Transitional Ministry at ZephyrPoint.org

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The Art of Transitional Ministry at ZephyrPoint.org

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emptiness unfilled, remaining connected

lovingly remembering, joyfully treasuring, with deep gratitude, a precious gift

“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Work of God the Reconciler: God with Us (A Barthian Ecclesiology)

Excerpts of thoughts to form a rough “outline of the matter” from “The Doctrine of Reconciliation” in Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth on certain ones “who are assembled in the Christian community”:

They dare to make the statement, that God is the One who is with them as God, amongst [those/others] who do not yet know this. … Their aim is to show them what they do not yet know but what they can and should know. … Much depends upon their coming to see that it applies to them. But everything depends upon their coming to see that it all has to do with God ; that it is God who is with them as God.

“God with us” — the core of the Christian message, the decisive general statement of the Christian community — can be interpreted as “God with us [humans/humanity]“, but with the clear distinction, with us [human ones] who know it but are always learning it afresh—and as the word of our declaration to all others, and therefore with ” us ” other [human ones] who have always to learn it afresh because we do not yet know it, although we can know it.

There is a sense here it seems of ongoing progress through learning afresh in the context of a community continually learning anew together—a gathered assembly being reformed and always reforming by their communal experience of eternity as a learning community, becoming more sure of their identity with increasing awareness and growing realization of the living reality of “God with us” in the Spirit of Christ.

In this movement from a narrower to a wider usage the statement ” God with us ” is the centre of the Christian message—and always in such a way that it is primarily a statement about God and only then and for that reason a statement about us [human beings].

the fierce urgency of now

"We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. ...and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. ... I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." 

(The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 28 August 1963 in Washington, D.C.)

beyond sesquicentennial memory

Remembering fifty (and a hundred plus) years ago....

"The pale history books in Harlem and Birmingham told how the nation had fought a war over slavery. Abraham Lincoln had signed a document that would come to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation. The war had been won but not a just peace. Equality had never arrived. Equality was a hundred years late. 

"The boy and the girl knew more than history. They knew something about current events. ... They knew that, for years, their own lawyers had won great victories in the courts which were not being translated into reality. 

"They were seeing on television, hearing from the radio, reading in the newspapers that this was the one-hundredth birthday of their freedom. ... But freedom had a dull ring, a mocking emptiness...." 

--excerpt(s) from the Introduction in "Why We Can't Wait", Martin Luther King, Jr.

the sore stark need

In the context of now more and more deliberate decrease of privacy in the new millennium, with the incessant deluge of data littering the information super highway, while traversing through the plethora of crass unbridled naked exposures marked by uninhibited blatant lack of discretions manifested via today's burgeoning social network media environment, the sore stark need for raising the level in quality and character of public discourse with civility and higher education to facilitate such is that much more magnified and readily apparent, writ large on the internet's web in the eternity of virtual space .... what a mess for all of the whole wide world to witness such a sad state, needing saving grace -- Lord, in your mercy, hear 

just desserts

delectably succulent fresh strawberries assiduously dipped in sumptuous, salivatingly nirvanic Nutella spread to please palates for desserts

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